From TheMystica.com:

“It is a very old belief, although buttressed by numerous tales of apparitions, that the Devil always appears with a cloven foot as a distinguishing mark. A suggested reason for such appearances is that the Evil One, having fallen to a level lower than any man is not be permitted to take the perfect human form, but must have some deformity such as the cloven foot. Others think there is a more likely explanation, the early Christians superimposed on the concept of the Devil the image of the pagan goat-footed god Pan. A.G.H.”

…Which is the first thing I thought when I saw these marvellous shoes! Never before have religious superstition, fertility worship and lethal phallic symbolism been brought together in the form of fabulous fetish footwear:

Picture (incongruously) discovered at PoorlyDressed.com.

Back on the question of a Domme’s divinity, a gent on the UK Mistresses forum boldly started a thread with the title “My mistress is not a Goddess!”:

“So you think your mistress is a Goddess, do you? What a load of bull! The only Goddess I’ve ever known is Freya and she lives on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.

Alright [sic], she may be pretty, maybe very pretty. Try standing on the concourse at King’s Cross station and look around. You’ll see at least a dozen stunningly attractive ladies almost as pretty as your ‘special one’.

So, you love the thigh-length boots and long gloves she wears that drive you to distraction? You do know that you can pick these up for less than 50-quid apiece on E-Bay, don’t you?

She’s dominant and knows how to put a man in his place. Fair enough. You mean a bit like Betty Turpin or Norah Batty? Who knows what the future will bring. My mother used to call that sort of thing hen-pecking!

She’s not a Goddess. She’s just an ordinary lady who’s got a lovely pair of boots and knows how to strut around in a provocative manner and one or two tricks that she’s picked up from friends at a fetish club. So next time you see her and she blows your mind, just think on these things.”

Well, much as it was meant in jest, it somewhat pisses on the bonfire of woman-worship. The thing is, I’m not sure that any Domme, or even her sub, actually believes that she is a Goddess incarnate.

However, isn’t a large part of what we do about symbolism and fantasy? For a man who wants to worship a female deity, his Mistress represents an archetype instead of the flesh-and-blood mortal she really is. Modern mainstream religion is pretty much entirely patriarchal, and the spirituality that the majority of us are brought up with is built around the dominant male. A number of clients from strict Muslim or Christian backgrounds have come to me specifically so that they can worship at the feet of a Goddess. It’s a spiritual act. They know, just as I do, that I am a human being underneath with the same flaws and foolishnesses as any other. Yet for that moment, I wear the mantle of a Goddess archetype that many find is absent from their daily lives. It’s something every Dominatrix does.

But anyway, more about that later… In the meantime, the recent shoot I did for Woman Worship with my beloved minion is now online here.

We Dominatrices are a creative bunch. Every Pro-Domme I know has a sideline in writing, art or music (or sometimes those musicians, artists or writers have a sideline in Professional Domination, depending on career trajectory!)

One way to combine the two, it seems, is Cell Popping. A mysterious Mistress known only as “Connie” has patented the practice and runs workshops and demonstrations in the USA, as well as selling kits via her website, Artistic Domme. Cell Popping itself is a body modification technique that involves tattoo-like scarring, albeit on a temporary basis. A hot probe is pressed to individual pores to create small burns. Putting enough of these burns together, intricate patterns can be made on the skin, many of which are displayed on the website, having been submitted by cell-popping Dommes around the world.

See the full gallery here.